I have been having fun with hand drawn typography anyway, and then I went and met Chank Diesel, who seems to have done a lot of interesting fonts we all know and love. So here is another misc. type inspired sketch.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with textures using black pen, and hand drawn typography. This was sketched on paper, and then colored with a little Photoshop action.

Here is a sketch I did a while back. It even got posted to the Weekly Moleskine. Finally getting around to posting it here too.

What happens if you combine a hot air balloon with a tent? Now you know. This is a really bad idea in real life, of course, but it would work great in fiction. Besides, it was fun to draw. In retrospect, I should have added a door… you know, to keep the bears out.

It was a dark and stormy night… No, scratch that. It was dark and ridiculously cold. As in, “my car is all the way across the street so I’m going to wait here till spring”, kind of cold. When I arrived down at Touch of Europe, a few starving artists were already lurking in the shadows, working in their sketchbooks. I pulled up a chair and scrawled out this quick sketch of Cassie sitting across from me. Emphasis on quick. As you can see, she was wearing all kinds of layers which provided lots of folds and textures to try and sort out, as well as protection from the cold… as long as she didn’t go outside.

Hmmm… I probably shouldn’t have mentioned who this is supposed to be. Now everyone can tell how much it doesn’t really look like her. Oh well. Sorry Cassie! Another DrawnTown in the books. I’ll be looking forward to the next one. Maybe something in the Caribbean?

You can see what other people were up to over at Graphic Content.

Growing up, I spent many hours pouring over Calvin and Hobbes books and trying to redraw the best/most hilarious facial expressions I could find. Sneezing, laughing, furious rage, he could do it all. How do you communicate that much emotion with so few lines? I obviously still don’t know… But one thing I do know is that facial expressions are key to bringing characters to life. Thanks to Bill Watterson, any cartoon character I draw will need to be a facial contortionist. This sketch is a few warm-up exercises. Pace yourself Zeke. You don’t want to sprain an eyebrow.

I have been trying to find excuses to use my Wacom tablet in the hopes that I will develop some level of skill with it. Some level above zero is preferred.

This sketch was one I discovered laying around when shoveling off my desk the other day. It was originally something I worked up while brainstorming video game ideas. This was my first take on a mechanical obstacle course game concept. That’s about all the farther it got, although there may be some potential there… Anyway, I took the rough pencil sketch and dropped in some color using the tablet and some secret techniques I picked up from Tony Cliff. Now obviously this isn’t very refined. (Why didn’t I go back in and fix some of the perspective flaws?) But it was fun, and way easier than my efforts before I had the tablet.

Lets see what other sketches need some color around here…

I landed myself a Wacom tablet a while back, and have been looking for time to experiment with it ever since. I am still getting the feel for it, but the potential is exciting! The above sketch was done in Painter using oil paint, and then drawn over the top with pencil. The second sketch (below) was done with chalk and then rubbed down for a smoother final product.

I seem to have a distinct orange color palette going lately… I’m not sure what that’s about other than I like the warm “magic hour” feel of these. Of course painting a cartoon caracter has never been done before. (Watch your step, you have reached the cutting edge.)

And you know you want one of these hanging over your living room couch.

Inspired by the Web2Summit map, I was doing some more sketching with SketchBook Pro on the iPad. I am interested to see how much a specific artist’s style shows across mediums, versus, conforming to the tool at hand. I did a similar sketch a while back with literal pencil and paper. I can see my “fingerprint” in each, although this digital sketch does look like I was having to work a bit harder to find the correct lines.

Of course, the nice thing about digital is you can easily have multiple versions of the same art. Here is the same sketch with the color taken out.

It definitely has a loose hand drawn feel to it.

FISHERMANS WHARF OF SAN FRANCISCO (DRAWN WITH SKETCHBOOK PRO)

Ever since I got an iPad, I have been on the lookout for a good sketching app. I started with Adobe Ideas, which is a nice and simple app. It tries to balance a loose-hand drawn feel with vector-based artwork. And its free, which is always a nice feature. With all that, however, Adobe Ideas left me wanting for actual sketching purposes. It auto-simplifies your lines, and reduces things to hard edged vectors. That is fine for some applications, but I was interested in something more painterly.

A few days ago I came across SketchBook Pro by Autodesk. I figured the guys who make Maya, Inventor, and 3DS Max could put together a decent sketch program, so I coughed up the $8 and took the plunge.

Below is my very first, experimental sketch with SketchBook Pro: (the deeper meaning is obvious…)

After a few more sketches and one lost weekend, here are some highlights of my experience to date:

The speed and ease with which you can get a rough sketch down on… screen is a real plus. If you’re looking to capture the seed of an idea while it is still fresh, this app fills the bill. There is a decent set of preloaded brushes, including pencil, charcoal, pen, marker, brush, air brush, etc. that allow you to work in a range of styles with little effort. There are also some more stylized brushes that allow you to easily mimic things like fur, grass, and other textures. The inevitable problem with the more distinctive brushes, of course, is they soon become as recognizable as a bevel and emboss Photoshop filter.

Going digital opens up possibilities a piece of paper can’t match. You get the benefit of layered files, multiple undos, and easy export to various file formats including layered PSDs. You can duplicate, iterate, and rework a sketch far more easily than pencil and paper allows. I am continuing to discover little tricks for improving my workflow. Even simple things like the eye dropper tool proved to be quite useful for going back to previously used colors. Besides, how else can you conveniently paint in full color without having to actually dig out the paints and brushes?

Digital is a two edged sword, however. The SketchBook Pro controls are intuitive, but can get awkward and labored if you’re frequently switching colors and brushes. There is no pressure sensitivity for varying line weight, and drawing with your fingertip is far less precise than a real pencil. Drawing on a screen is a different medium than paper or canvas, so you’re always going to lose some of that analog feel.

One of the biggest limitations is that the art board is fixed at 1024×768 pixels. There are no options to create larger or more detailed work. You are given the ability to zoom in dramatically, but you don’t get more detail. You simply get a blown up and anti-aliased view of the original image. In actual use, this means any time you want to zoom in to do some detail work, you end up looking at a screen full of fuzzy pixels. I suspect this was a strategic limitation to work within the abilities of the iPad, further driven by an understanding of the application’s intended use case.

Overall, I have been impressed. There are some shortcomings, but I think this app carves a niche that matches the immediate, low-impact way an iPad is used. If you want to do polished digital illustration, you’re going to want something with a stylus and more horsepower. Although it won’t be replacing my physical sketchbook any time soon, SketchBook Pro is a fun way to do loose sketches and concept ideas on an iPad.

Here are a couple video examples of people drawing with SketchBook Pro:
(You can see everyone is using a pogo stylus. I’m going to have to look into that.)

Nice iPad painting demo

Demo from Autodesk

Sketching with SketchBook Pro